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Help us: Here’s some of what we’re working on

With something like 500-600 retractions per year, and a constant flurry of publishing news to keep up with, our small staff stays busy – and can’t always immediately post on every new retraction that we discover. We’ve created this page to show you some of what’s on our current to-do list. If you have any tips for us about the nature of a retraction, expression of concern, or correction you see here — or know of any other retractions by the same authors — please let us know in a comment. Note: Once we’ve posted about a retraction, we’ll bump it down to the bottom of the list.

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117 thoughts on “Help us: Here’s some of what we’re working on”

Good idea. Let us, your readers, know when you see something on your radar that you don’t have time to do a full post on– then we can tell you early on what we know or suspect… like a distant early warning system, only more fun.

I did have time to do a post on my blog: http://bit.ly/1Utx6pk
I also explain why I didn’t want to pursue it…but that was then. Things are getting worse.
The field of nutrition is surely the most fertile for your work.

The authors denied wrongdoing. They requested a partial retraction of Study #3 however on the grounds of unspecified “coding errors” in the dataset. The editor of Marketing Matters decided to retract the whole paper, however.

Let them eat bacon? What’s the best article you’ve read evaluating in depth that 2014 Chowdhury meta-analysis allegedly exonerating saturated fats? Thanks to Retraction Watch for tipping us off to all the critiques, including from Harvard’s School of Public Health.

Two recent corrections from Karolinska Institute/Harvard researchers in JCB and Genes Dev. As noted in pubpeer, one of the authors on these papers have multiple additional papers flagged for image duplications (see link)

Have suggestion for an article: Most of the retractions/mega corrections lately seem to be due to image irregularities, especially on Pub Peer. There seems to be a script these authors follows which INVARIABLY states that the image problems don’t change the analysis or the conclusions of the paper…..if that is true then we should be seeing many of the retracted papers re-published with the same findings and different images…..Is this in fact really occurring?

“The following article from Anaesthesia, ‘Safety of cardiac surgery without blood transfusion: a retrospective study in
Jehovah’s Witness patients’, by El Azab SR, Vrakking R, Verhage [sic] G and Rosseel PMJ, published online in Wiley
Online Library (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2044.2009.06232.x/full) on 17 March 2010 and in
Volume 65, Number 4, pages 348-52, has been retracted by agreement between three of the named authors
(R Vrakking, G Verhaegh and PMJ Rosseel), the Journal Editor-in-Chief, Steve Yentis, and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
The retraction has been agreed following confirmation by the Amphia Hospital Ethics Committee that the study did not
have ethical approval as claimed. In addition, the article was written and submitted without the knowledge or consent of
R Vrakking, G Verhaegh and PMJ Rosseel. It has not been possible to obtain a response from the corresponding author
SR El Azab.”

New retraction from CEBP (hope I didn’t miss it in your archives or in other commenters’ comments). The first paragraphs of the retraction notice are provided below.

‘The article titled, “Confounding of the association between radiation exposure from CT scans and risk of leukemia and brain tumors by cancer susceptibility syndromes,” which was published in the January 2016 issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention (1), is being retracted at the request of the authors.

The authors recently reported analytical errors that drastically change the published article conclusions.’

“We have been informed of a question of the reliability and validity of the data reported in the above work. We note that the data described in this article have not been independently verified, and we recommend that readers take this into account when reading the paper or performing further work based on this study.”

Any plans to discuss the case of Christian Kreipke? Lots of interesting stuff there, with only very recently a retraction, despite Kreipke already fired in 2012 for alleged misconduct.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mvr.2016.07.003
There are also several lawsuits related to Kreipke’s case.

Here’s the statement (in Swedish) issued on Sept. 9 from the Swedish Central Ethics Review Board concerning Sjöqvist et al (e.g. Paolo Macchiarini) “Experimental orthotopic transplantation of a tissue-engineered oesophagus in rats from Nature Communications 5 Article number: 3562 (2014) http://www.epn.se/media/2375/o-1-2016-expertgruppens-yttrande-160906.pdf
Basically, the board states that the data that they have been able to review (though much raw data was missing due to poor laboratory practices and lack of compliance with established research protocols) in no way supports the conclusions in the article, thus concluding that the article constitutes research fraud. In addition, the board states that the rats were so emaciated that ethical considerations clearly should have lead the researchers to interrupt the experiment. There will be disciplinary actions from the K.I. towards the researchers (though the senior researcher (e.g. Macchiarini…) received the harshest criticism).
The review board were asked to assess the article by the Karolinska Institute in May.
As an alumna of the medical school at the Karolinska Institute (and someone who did research there for my PhD) I am saddened and embarrassed, though not entirely surprised, by the university’s administration and the way it has handled the whole sordid Macchiarini affair (which lead some commentators to call Karolinska “the Chernobyl of ethics”…).

For some time i have been trying to raise an issue with scientists in physiology, about an apparent contradiction in a range of papers about the restriction of a particular tissue growth. So far i can find no one in the field or general physiology who is willing to comment on this.

It is a basic rule in scientific studies, to take into account the recognised factors of influence in the field. Otherwise the study is not valid and can be misleading. In the case of studies into the restriction of tissue growth in-vivo, any recognised growth restricting factor must be taken into account. However in this particular area of study, one very basic growth restricting factor has been consistently overlooked.

Hair follicles go through a cycle of regression and re-enlargement within the dermal tissue, and scientists seek to find the cause of the restricted growth of follicles in cases of hair loss. Yet there is no reference in any of the current studies to the resistance of the dermal tissue, and the recognised spatial growth controls.

I suggest that once these controls are factored into the known data in the field, a lot of the mystery disappears. There are also wider implications to this connection in evolution, and some serious diseases. I discuss this in my article here.

The current studies into hair follicle growth restriction, continue to ignore spatial growth controls. So if there is a scientific argument against a central role of spatial growth controls in hair follicle enlargement, i would be interested to hear it?

Retraction (April 2016, Volume 22, Issue 2, pp 289–289):http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12298-016-0352-4
DOI: 10.1007/s12298-016-0352-4
“The corresponding author retracts this article due to the erroneous inclusion of Table 3 and Fig. 1C from the previously published article by Mukhtar, S., Anis, M., & Ahmad, N.(2010) titled “In vitro optimization of phytohormones on micropropagation in Butterfly pea (Clitoria ternatea L.)” in the Journal of herbs, spices & medicinal plants 16:2, 98–105. The authors regret the error due to oversight and thank the anonymous complainant and the editor of PMBP for bringing it to their notice.”

Retraction:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12298-016-0341-7
“The corresponding author withdraws/retracts this article due to the mistaken inclusion of Fig. 1b from our previously 2011 paper in Acta Physiologiae Plantarum entitled “Hairy root culture of Picrorhiza kurrooa Royle ex Benth.: a promising approach for the production of picrotin and picrotoxinin”. The authors accept the mistake and thank the anonymous complainant and the editor of PMBP for bringing it to their notice.”

Retraction:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12298-016-0343-5
“The corresponding author retracts this article published at online first due to the unreliability of findings arising out of inappropriate handling of the photograph at the bottom right panel of Fig. 2. The authors regret the inappropriate image and thank the anonymous complainant at Pubpeer and the editor of PMBP for bringing it to their notice.”

“This Correction makes clear the existence of links between the Academic Editor (A. Marusic) and the first-named author (E. Wager) that were not disclosed at the time of publication.

A. Marusic has co-authored a 2013 article (Marusic A, Wager E, Utrobicic A, et al., 2013, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.MR000038/abstract ) with E. Wager and they subsequently worked together on the ensuing Cochrane systematic review. In addition, E. Wager has given unpaid workshops at the department of A Marusic, in Split, Croatia (where E. Wager is an unpaid Visiting Professor).

In light of these Competing Interests, the Publisher examined the peer-review process for this paper https://peerj.com/articles/1154/reviews/ and does not believe that the peer-review or decision making process was inappropriately compromised.”

Replication of text was identified in the Cochrane Review. This was limited to copying of short phrases and was acknowledged by the authors. The level of text plagiarism was minor and at a level that would be addressed by a correction. The Editor in Chief carried out further investigation into the alleged plagiarism of data, with the co-operation of the review authors, who provided supplementary information in support of their work. The allegations related to the derivation of means and standard deviations of data from some of the included studies. Although the authors acknowledge and cite the Hemilä 2011 review, the Editor in Chief considered that the authors’ explanation regarding some similarities in presented data between the two reviews was not conclusive.

In case you missed the following one in Applied Physics Letters (publication of the American Institute of Physics):
Retraction: “Bulk- and layer-heterojunction phototransistors based on poly[2-methoxy-5-(2′-ethylhexyloxy-p-phenylenevinylene)] and PbS quantum dot hybrids” [Appl. Phys. Lett. 106, 253501 (2015)]”http://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.4975640
The article was retracted by the authors who seem to have messed up some calculation and failed to give sufficient information as far as reproducibility of the experiments is concerned. The original paper had been cited 6 times according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.

Just in case you missed the following one in Applied Physics Letters (publication of the American Institute of Physics):
Retraction: “Experimental techniques for imaging and measuring transient vapor nanobubbles” [Appl. Phys. Lett. 101, 264102 (2012)]http://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.4978413

The retraction notice says the decision was made after the Rice University Research Integrity Officer reported misconduct to the journal. The misconduct is about manipulation of figures. The original paper had been cited 16 times according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.

It is interesting to note that the retraction notice says that one of the duplicated curves was found in an article (http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v20/n7/full/nm.3484.html) published in 2014, i.e., two years after the publication year of the retracted paper (2012). Does the retraction also question the Nature Medicine paper?

Anyone would feel bad about loosing four articles in a raw, I guess. But here, the retractions seem to follow from a discussion in the literature of the now retracted papers. As mentioned in the retraction notice, two other groups found that the results contradicted theory and experiments. The authors seem to have felt they had to have a closer look at their data. This presumably led them to find the mistake in their program. I would say they did the right thing with the retractions. I just hope the four papers were not the content of a PhD thesis, it would be sad.

I am working in that precise field of research. In my opinion, this story is a warning for everyone who uses in-house computer programs: double checks, consistency checks etc. whatever you call them are not an option. If the results contradict a theory or experiments, you’d better compare them with another code before you send them for review. There are several of such codes available for free in the field of molecular simulations that would do the job.

On the online version of Annals of Mathematics, one of the top 3 journals in pure math, there’s an odd “online first” notice, a retraction of a paper by the editors (something very rare, usually it is the authors who give a corrigendum) http://annals.math.princeton.edu/2017/186-1/p09 . What’s odd is that the editors give no explanation whatsoever, and a more minor point is that the retraction is dated july 1,2017 while we’re june 23.

Research/publication ethics issue. Here is the question, do you feel that it is ethical to have to pay publication charges to an Open Access journal if you are submitting a “Letter to the Editor” to bring to light possible issues with a manuscript that are either unethical or a lack of methods that prohibits replication?

A dispute between the WHO Fetal Growth Study and Oxford’s INTERGROWTH-21st study plays out in The Lancet: ” it looks to us like taking the intellectual content from the WHO fetal growth study to another project and, receiving money for developing the study and then not doing it, while having declared no conflict of interest, is approved scientific conduct.”

After the initiation of an investigation into concerns about the reporting of results, the articles have been retracted as the result of information provided by corresponding author David S. DeGeest, who informed the journal that he incorrectly reported the results of the data analysis completed by him. Specifically, DeGeest notified the journal that many of the parameter estimates and significance tests he reported in the papers are false.

DeGeest emphasized to the journal that he acted alone without the knowledge of co-authors.

My question to the journal would be: did IJP (or Elsevier, or someone else) perhaps use some image comparison software? It’s hard to see how they would otherwise have found this.

My question to the authors would be: why on earth do something like this on a figure that is largely irrelevant? Heck, they could have used one of their own unpublished figures and misrepresent that (and I strongly urge others not to follow up on that unethical suggestion!). No one would have noticed.

It also makes you wonder what else was possibly made up in this paper.

There are 4 papers (only 1 peer reviewed) on PubPeer, and 2 self-published books, that need some attention from accomplished researchers, to check their extraordinary claims, concerning Darwin and Wallace. Knowledge in that area would be an advantage, but not compulsory. True grit is, however.

If the “Lupine” name is the first of a series of predator-themed publisher names, I applaud the nascent tradition, and suggest ‘Vulpine’, “Musteline” and ‘Crocutine’ as future possibilities.

“Lupine” claims to be US-based, with a mail-forwarding-service address in New York. It shares this, its phone numbers, and many details of domain registration with “Crimson Publishers” and “BioMedical Journal”.

I should have mentioned this in my previous post, that the editor(s) of this journal should be commended for the quality of the retraction notice. After reading the notice, there is absolutely no doubt as to the detailed circumstances leading to the retraction, what rules were broken, etc.

Nice and helpful (that’ll be sarcasm) retraction notice in the Journal of Controlled Release (IF 7.9) here:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jconrel.2018.05.036
“This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor in Chief and one of the authors. The article was found to be incompatible with the latest scientific information.”

At the request of the primary author and investigator, and in consultation with Drug Metabolism and Disposition, this paper has been retracted. Upon further investigation of the results, the laboratory is unable to reproduce results that are primary to the paper, and are unable to contact the scientist that generated the results.

Retraction in AAPS PharmSciTech: https://doi.org/10.1208/s12249-017-0838-6
“This article has been retracted by the journal because the editors have clear evidence that the scientific findings in this article are unreliable. The article describes the formulation and in vitro/in vivo testing of an Optimized Pulsatile Delivery Tablet (OP1) as follows: 10 mm diameter press-coated Pulsatile Delivery Tablet (PDT) that contains a 6 mm diameter Fast-Release Core Tablet (FRCT), prepared, characterized and tested in the rabbit pharmacokinetic study. The authors have confirmed to the editors that they actually prepared and tested a “special batch” of FRCT core tablets having a diameter of 2.5 mm contained in 5 mm press-coated PDT tablets having a diameter of 5 mm, but the use of this smaller FRCT/PDT is not described anywhere in the manuscript. Therefore, the editors believe that since the article does not describe the dosage form that was actually studied, the findings in the article are unreliable.”

You’ve covered this story already about Derosa and his duplications of clinical trials, but today I received the ToC for the European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, which contained this retraction notice:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejps.2018.08.039